‘Demonstrably inequitable’: Australia’s school assessment system under fire

Compiled with input from a host of anonymous teachers, educators Stephen Hart and Raymond Burns have called out the scale of the problem in a new Page Research Centre report.

They argue that if we want a better and fairer education system our current approach to assessment – and the academic standards we hold students to – must undergo dramatic structural change.

Dr Fiona Mueller, director of research at the Centre, says this research paper lays bare the “demonstrable structural inequity across the country” when it comes to our assessment practices.

“It’s the lack of comparability across schools and systems and jurisdictions…

“At the heart this is about learning integrity, so being able to measure what our students are achieving, not just what the curriculum intends for them to learn, or what we might spend a lot of time delivering in the classroom, but actually what an individual student can demonstrate in an equitable and valid assessment task…

“And we have no way of measuring that in valid and reliable ways,” Mueller, a former teacher, concludes.

Obvious discrepancies in the data speak volumes, the report suggests.

That is, while in some jurisdictions the proportion of Year 12 students receiving higher grades has increased ‘substantially’ and fewer students are receiving lower grades, we see stagnant or declining performance across national and international assessments, the likes of NAPLAN and PISA.

According to Mueller, a common understanding of what excellence entails is sorely lacking across the board.

“We all want to do the best we can for our students, but when the definition of excellence is not clear, when the curriculum doesn’t actually give teachers a really clear understanding of the highest standards to which they should help their students to aspire – and when teacher education doesn’t focus on academic excellence across the curriculum, if you then, on top of all of that, don’t have valid and reliable and nationally consistent ways of measuring students’ progress, you really end up with these discrepancies where there’s so much variation.”

It’s not hard to find examples of what has been deemed a ‘dumbing down’ or a general lowering of expectations within Australian education, Mueller says.

Unlike in high-performing countries like England and Singapore, our formal assessment protocols don’t hold school systems to account for students’ academic outcomes, Mueller adds.

England, by contrast, has never abandoned its rigorous and nationally consistent standards and exams.

“And that is true, of course, of the high-performing countries around the world,” Mueller argues.

“That is regarded as not something separate or optional or antithetical to excellence – it’s regarded as an inherent part of measuring students’ progress and ensuring that teachers know what excellence looks like.”

Australian policymakers are right to look closely at England’s approach here, she notes.

“They haven’t wavered from that commitment, they haven’t somehow separated out standardised assessment because it became unfashionable or because suddenly it was deemed to be too stressful for students or whatever.

“And we moved away, so far away, from that understanding, probably for some good reasons I guess.”

But once abandoned in both an ideological and practical sense, Mueller says, it’s very difficult to bring that same level of accountability back in at scale.

“And that is the challenge in Australia.

“For England, for other countries who have never abandoned it, they [just have to] make their tweaks and other adjustments, obviously in the age of AI in particular, because their baseline is already well prepared.”

The report takes aim at the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), saying its statistical ranking of students for tertiary entrance is clearly inequitable and derived from education systems with highly variable standards and practices.

While some students complete Year 12 and receive an ATAR rank without the requirement to complete any standardised, external examinations, others may be required to do so for all their subjects, be they written, practical or performance-based exams, the authors flag.

The paper proposes three key reforms to overhaul the system, including a move to bring in three new national assessment protocols to capture student progress at Year 6, 10 and 12 – a measure Mueller says the mainstream media have honed in on.

“The most urgent recommendation, which I think deserves more attention, is the one to review the senior secondary certificate and senior secondary assessment protocols, including the ATAR, which are demonstrably inequitable,” she says.

“The trickle-down effect is so significant, and the OECD calls it ‘the washback effect’ from the senior secondary years, and talks about how critical that is.

“And if we can get [senior secondary assessment] right, I think that would go a long way to raising standards and outcomes.”

It’s not hard to find examples of what has been deemed a ‘dumbing down’ or a general lowering of expectations within Australian education, Mueller adds.

“I saw it when I was teaching, where we suddenly went from expecting a two-page response to an English task, for example, to 250 words, because the students didn’t want to write at length anymore.”

Ultimately, our constitutional arrangements mean that it is “absolutely inevitable” to have some variation in school assessment practices across the country, Mueller says.

“What this paper shows though is the extent of variation. And I think while all of us want to trust that our children are expected to meet high standards, that’s just not the case.”